Reviews: The Great Gatsby

I liked this book a lot. I've currently been trying to read all the classics I possibly can, so one of them was this book. The characters are interesting and the book made me think. It is well written and kept me interested, which I was surprised by because I generally don't like anything with a plot like that. My favorite characters were Gatsby and Jordan. This is a really good book and I'd recommend it to anyone.

I had to read this book for my 11th grade English class last month, and I enjoyed it.

After reading first chapter, I literally just started randomly gushing about how great it was to my classmates and friends. All of whom looked at me incredulously, because I trash practically every book we have to read for English class. I'm not the type to be impressed with "deeper meanings" of books like Daisy's yellow/white clothing is ~symbolic!~ or the car crash is ~foreshadowing!~...but The Great Gatsby is just that good.

Fitzgerald's style is so pretty that it's refreshing. He likes to draw unexpected comparisons between things - like hot air balloons and dresses - in a way that reminds me of Haruki Murakami. There are whole paragraphs in there that are just...really, really pretty. Ok, my description doesn't do it justice at all, but just trust me on this.

The narrator's sarcastic way of describing everything is great. There are a lot of truly hilarious lines, and I actually laughed out loud a few times.

The plot is easy enough to understand, though there are a few wtf moments like the McKee-in-his-underwear-with-Nick scene. A lot of my classmates complained about how there were too many characters, but after reading Baccano and Durarara I felt like rolling my eyes at them.

As is the case with all books, movies, video games and so on, whether it's good book is a matter of opinion. That said, my opinion is that it's a good book.

Most of my classmates didn't like it, and I get the feeling that if I'd read it maybe 3 or 4 years ago, I wouldn't have liked it either. So in the end, I guess I would recommend this to people ages 14 and above.

The Great Gatsby is interesting. It shows interesting characters, a relatively cynical view at the world, and it makes several noteworthy statements about human nature, love, life, and the like. I liked the story and the characters.

That said, the prose has a tendency to be overly confusing, the characters are often hard to empathize with, the main plot (while interesting to analyse) is not inherently engulfing or attractive, and it has a couple pacing problems when Nick (The Narrator) decides he has to explain to us that his life doesn't revolve around the events and the characters central to the story, and that he has a life too, you know.

I think all in all, the book should be read by people who are interested in language, and people, more than they are interested in flashy Bad Ass characters doing awesome things. Or at least people who are willing to put aside the modern reader's need for theatrically dramatic, action oriented, or even comedy-based writing for the purpose of reading a book that focuses more on social commentary, people, their actions, their consequences, and the reasons for them. The characters are not there for escapism. A decent vocabulary may also help, so any tropers who have had their vocabulary destroyed by this very site could probably benefit from reading it.

While I myself liked the story, I found the book a little too Purple Prose-ish to my tastes, in an adverb-filled way, but it never quite becomes an unbearable problem, and I got used to it as just a stylistic choice after the second chapter. I recommend it highly, but I don't do it because I think people will like it, or because I think that it's an awesome book. I recommend it because I think that reading The Great Gatsby is an experience that people should have, and that everyone can learn something from.

Even if that something is the definition of words such as "supercilious", or "sumptuous" and "romp".

I recently read this book for a lit class. The characters were intriguing and the plot had an air of mystery about it. I enjoyed the time period, the descriptions of decadent parties, and I was fascinated by the motivations of the characters.

However, I don't think I really got it. My classmates and my teacher seemed to find a lot of symbolism and important themes in the book. To me it was a story about a dude was doing some shady business, a chick who was kinda ditzy, a jerkhole who was the designated villain, murder, and a self-contradictory narrator. I don't know, maybe I missed something.

Also, it felt incomplete. I felt like the nine chapters of TGG should have been part of a larger novel covering a broader period of time. I wish it had gone more in depth into Gatsby's past and resolved Nick and Jordan's relationship in a "cleaner" and more complete way.

This is perhaps the worst book I have ever read. It's dull, the writing is lazy, the story is annoying, the characters are boring and unempathetic, and any so called "depth" completely escapes me. I understand why this book went out of print.

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